Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Whether it's comic books, videogames, books, sequels or something a little more original you are after, these three lists I have written for The Daily Heckle should hopefully have everyone covered. There are going to be a huge amount of adaptations and franchise additions in 2016 so strap in and read on for my 30 Must See Movies of 2016, handily divided into three different lists!

Thursday, 26 March 2015

It would be
nice to say that Jason Statham unleashes his wild side in Wild Card but
actually this film finds him on relatively restrained form compared to stuff like The
Transporter and Crank films.

From a William
Goldman script based on his own novel, Wild Card begins with a woman being
ditched outside a hospital bloodied and battered. It's up to Las Vegas security
consultant Nick Wild (Statham) to find the men responsible. Roughed up beyond recognition
by a fighter and his bodyguards, the woman is Holly and as soon as she is out
of hospital, she contacts Nick as he is the only person in Vegas who is able to
help her with his particular set of skills.

Offering up
some graphic detail of her rape and humiliation, Wild Card should leave
audiences chomping at the bit for Statham to unleash the pain on her
tormentors. Unfortunately
Dominik García-Lorido is completely unconvincing as a victim
of such a horrendous ordeal and the script cares little for the trauma she has endured and much
more about how Statham will respond. When he sarcastically utters 'this is the
highlight of my career', you suspect no acting was required.

Boxer Danny
DeMarco is the vicious thug hiding up in his swanky Vegas suite. It takes
almost 40 minutes for Statham to confront him and show off what he can do and when the action comes,
it’s swift and brutal. With a total of just three fight scenes in the entire
film, it is likely that even those that are after a simple Statham beat-em-up
will be left disappointed by this one.

When
revenge is served and Wild goes on a gambling binge, like in the recent The
Gambler, it’s incredibly difficult to sympathise with someone who keeps raising
the stakes and risking throwing away obscene amounts of money. Nick has a soft
spot for Blackjack and just can't walk away from the tables, even when he's
half a million up. It’s a typical plot device that will leave many screaming
with frustration at the screen.

Despite a
cool soundtrack and last minute appearance from a coolly sinister Stanley
Tucci, overall Wild Card could have dealt a considerably better hand.

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

My book on The Blair Witch Project has taken me about two years to research and write. Now it's available to buy online here,and to tempt you, here are 15 things you may not have known about the film.

1. The Blair Witch
Project made nearly $250 million worldwide at the box office, which is nearly
10,000 times its production budget.

2. The Blair Witch
Project started as an idea, referred to by the directing duo as far back as
1993 as The Woods Movie. The
directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick took the seed of this idea and
wrote a script that was only 35 pages long.

3. Far bigger budget horror efforts such as Sleepy Hollow (1999), The Haunting (1999) and End of Days (1999) could not compete
with The Blair Witch Project’s box
office draw, even with the likes of Johnny Depp, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the
promise of bucket loads of CGI crammed into the trailers.

4. When an eight minute teaser of The Blair Witch Project was
screened on television without revealing to the audience that it was fake, a
detective called in to offer his help in finding the ‘lost’ filmmakers.

5. The Blair Witch
Project was originally conceived of as a more traditional mock-documentary
with the footage shot by the actors only meant to feature in the last part of
the documentary on the curse of the Blair Witch through the ages. It was only
after the footage Heather and Mike filmed was returned to the directors and
editing had begun that the idea to use only this footage in the feature was
initiated.

6. The Blair Witch
Project even beat the following films at the box office: Tom Hanks in The Green Mile, nineteenth Bond film The World is Not Enough, Richard Curtis
rom-com Notting Hill and Will Smith
blockbuster Wild, Wild West.

7. There are many stories reported of people travelling to the
town of Burkittsville where the events of the film take place in order to
search for the students. Since then, fans of the film have repeatedly stolen
the Burkitsville ‘welcome’ sign.

8. According to Sanchez, ‘the original budget to get the film
in the can was probably between $20,000 and $25,000. Then, once we got to
Sundance to make a print and do a sound mix, we were probably more in the
neighbourhood of $100,000’ (Young, 2009).

9. They even bought one of the cameras then shot the film and
returned it in time to get a full refund.

10. When it was bought by Artisan Entertainment at the Sundance
Film Festival, they spent another half a million dollars on it. According to
Sanchez, ‘they did a new sound mix, and they had us re-shoot some stuff. They
didn't like the original ending with Mike standing in the corner. They asked us
to shoot some new endings — Mike hanging by his neck; Mike crucified on a big
stick figure; Mike with his shirt ripped open and all bloodied. We shot them
but ended up staying with our original ending. So the budget of what you saw in
the theatres was probably $500,000 to $750,000’ (Young, 2009).

11. On making it past the deterrents, those continuing into the
actual audition found themselves thrown into an off-the-cuff improvisation,
according to actor Joshua Leonard (Mannes, 1999). The directors would
immediately say “You’ve been in jail for the last nine years. We’re the parole
board. Why should we let you go?” Those that could not spring into character in
an instant were shown the door.

12. Instead of having the directors with the actors on location,
Myrick and Sanchez would leave mysterious bundles, rock piles and stick figures
around for the cast to discover. They would slime the backpacks of the
characters and make frightening noises in the night, at one point even
attacking their tent to scare the cast. This approach was also based on producer
Gregg Hale’s military training. Hale had been through Survival, Evasion,
Resistance and Escape (SERE) training whilst in the army that involved four
days of being chased by American soldiers pretending to be hunting for him. He
spoke of his terror despite knowing that soon the ordeal would be over and that
the soldiers were simply playing a part.

13. The directors had programmed ‘escape routes’ into the GPS
systems and after 24 hours of rain, the cast decided to use one. They ended up
at a house where Donahue reveals they were invited in for hot cocoa and got to
use a real toilet (Lim, 1999).

14. By the last two days of the shoot, Heather and Michael, the
two remaining cast members, were only being fed a single Power Bar and a banana
per day.

15. The directors had to cut 20 hours of raw footage down into
an 80 minute film.

Let me guess... you probably did know some of those. Well I'm sorry butI had to convince you to read it somehow. Anyway please consider buying a copy of my book here.

I've been doing a bit of writing for The Daily Heckle recently. They offer cash for articles so if any of my fellow bloggers are interested, I recommend you get straight in touch.

First up, I wrote about Scary Movies for Kids. There aren't any surprises on this list but they all sure as hell scared the crap out of me as a kid. Except one which wasn't around when I was a kid but still bloody scared me as an adult.

Then I wrote an opinion piece on whether or not the BBC should sack Jeremy Clarkson after his scuffle with a Top Gear producer. I won't tell you which way I leaned so hopefully you may just give the article a read!

Most recently, I wrote an article on the top 10 most shocking moments from Game of Thrones so far. Again, there won't be many surprises on this list but it was great fun going back through those moments that make Game of Thrones such an incredibly memorable series.

That's all for now, but in the upcoming weeks, I'll be writing about the must see movies of 2016.

I'm glad the trailer for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation didn't self-destruct as soon as I'd finished watching it for the first time. I've now watched this trailer four or five times and each time I just can't wait for it to get to those final few seconds of Tom Cruise doing what he does best and hanging off a jet that is taking off at god knows what speed.

I'm no big fan of the first three Mission Impossible films. The first had some great (and iconic) moments, the second was completely forgettable crap and the third was ok. But the fourth film, Ghost Protocol blew my socks off. Cruise is a born entertainer and even with all his money and success, just keeps trying to up the ante, especially with this franchise. The Burj Khalifa scrambling scene was a dizzying stand out in an otherwise excellent action film.

I'm not sure if they can hold on to that magic, particularly with Brad Bird departing as director after just one outing, but from the look of this trailer, I think they may have come pretty close. The more Simon Pegg in these films the better and this jet stunt looks like another level of insanity from Tom Cruise; the guy with the most exciting job in the world.

Wednesday, 11 March 2015

Julianne Moore finally gets the recognition she deserves from the Academy with an attention grabbing performance
that is sure to tug at the heart strings of audiences around the world.

Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is a happily married woman
with three grown children and a successful career as a renowned linguistics
professor. Soon after turning 50, Alice begins to forget words and decides to
see a neurologist as her memory starts to decline in other ways. It starts with
just missing a few words here and there, but then she starts to forget where
she is, even on the campus where she works. Alice receives the devastating
diagnosis that she has early onset Alzheimer’s disease and that her life, and
that of her family, is about to rapidly and dramatically change.

Alec Baldwin is the husband too wrapped up in his own work
to even notice his wife’s struggle until Alice lets it all spill out one night.
While Alice has to face no longer working, her husband John remains committed
to his own career, testing their bond and making life more difficult for both
of them. Alice’s grown children all have their own issues with eldest daughter
Kate Bosworth trying to get pregnant and Kristen Stewart desperate to become an
actress, much to her mother’s disapproval.

Based on the novel by Lisa Genova, Still Alice is a weepy,
depressing film. Luckily, and ironically for a film called Still Alice, it
barely stays still for a moment. Despite the slow, mournful soundtrack, Still
Alice rushes through its story. Alice’s Alzheimer’s comes on rapidly, affecting
her life and the life of her family quickly and viciously. It is a shame that
there is not more time to get to know the characters of her kids as Bosworth,
Stewart and Hunter Parrish in particular feel completely short changed by a
script that barely explores their reaction to their mother’s illness.

It’s an aggressive, destructive disease that not only eats
at Alice’s mind, but also threatens to attack the three children. The inherited
nature of the disease means that they all have a 50/50 chance of developing it
also, and then on passing it on to their own children. However, this is only
briefly alluded to and the focus remains very much on Moore’s central
character. Alice is a fiercely intelligent woman who relishes her mind and
finds the erosion of her cognitive capacity to be unbearable.

Moore is an actress who often looks on the verge of crying
anyway, but Still Alice gives her the opportunity to really give those tear
ducts a workout. At times trying desperately to appear normal and happy for her
children and at others, letting all her emotions loose, Moore unsurprisingly
delivers on all fronts. Seeing her transformation from remarkable and vivacious
career woman to tragic victim hits home most notably in the scene when her old
self comes face to face with the woman she has become. Before succumbing to the
disease, Alice makes a video for herself to watch in the future, and this
moment really brings home just how much she has changed.

At forty minutes into the film, this is Alice making a tragic,
life-altering decision that will leave audiences feeling defeated and hopeless.
It’s a brave or cowardly choice from Alice, depending on your viewpoint, but it
also lends the rest of the film a terrible inevitability. It is clear that
there is no way that Sill Alice can have a happy ending, no matter what the
outcome is.

Though there are occasional moments of happiness, the score
is all heartbreaking stings and melancholy piano. Directors Richard Glatzer and
Wash Westmoreland aren’t letting anyone off easily when watching this story
full of despair. They plant us in the headspace of Alice with her surroundings
often out of focus , reflecting the confusion and distance she begins to feel,
even in the most familiar of surroundings. They use Moore’s face continuously
to reveal the inner torment that she feels as her memory deteriorates. On the
one hand, there is some respite from the misery in knowing that she lived a
full life and got to watch her children grow up, but on the other, the irony
that such an intelligent woman, so passionate about words and communication is
now starting to lose her ability to speak is all the more tragic.

When Alice sums up living with her disease in an impassioned
speech to the Alzheimer’s Association, it is a rare moment of triumph in a film
that does not deal in joy and overcoming adversity. Still Alice is a film about
loss, about perceptions of people suffering from Alzheimer’s and about the
effects it has on the victims and (to a far lesser extent) those around them.
Despite Moore’s excellent performance, Bosworth, Stewart and Baldwin could have
been given more to do by a script that should have spent more time exploring
the effects on those around Alice.